Your neighborhood in words.
Sight, sound, smell.
How does it make you feel?
Home?
Submit a poem.
A collaborative effort between the Fair Housing Center and local creative agencies is seeking ZIP-code inspired poems written by current and former Toledo-area residents. The unremarkable five lines of prose above would qualify for West Toledo's 43613 area.
The concept is simple: Write a five-line poem using a per-line word constraint based on the ZIP code in which the writer lives. Or lived, for Toledo’s expats.
The Ode to the ZIP Code contest was inspired by a program started by the literary organization in Miami. April is both Fair Housing Month and National Poetry Month.
“It’s really a way to get people to talk about where they live and what their experiences are,” said Sarah Jenkins, chief of communications and outreach for the Fair Housing Center. “Doing it by ZIP codes will give us the chance to see how neighborhoods are similar and how they’re different … and to really celebrate the diversity of our region.”
Poems can be submitted online, now through April 1, at theartscommission.org. A panel of judges will select a number of top entries — depending on how many poems are submitted — and the authors will be invited to a public reading on April 19, which is 419 Day, at the Toledo-Lucas County Library, main branch.
Authors of the top three poems will receive cash prizes of $300, $200, and $100, Ms. Jenkins said.
Ryan Bunch, communications and outreach coordinator for the Arts Commission, said the contest will require people to give their neighborhoods a second thought. Sounds that they might no longer notice, buildings they’ve long overlooked, those can come into focus in the short poems.
“It’s just kind of taking a moment, a quiet moment of contemplation to think about those sites and sounds that inspire you,” he said. “That quirky building you admire but don’t think to talk about later? This is the chance to do that.”
Ms. Jenkins said she expects a variety of poems: humorous, uplifting, or even bleak.
“People are welcome to be honest either way,” she said. “... I think we want a sense of what people’s experiences are living in different neighborhoods and to explore that and really gain perspective on the differences.”
The April 19 reading, at the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, Main Library, 325 N. Michigan St., is from 6 to 8 p.m. in the McMaster Center.
First Published March 21, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
